


2,908 Miles

by CantStopImagining



Series: I love you more than all of the distance between us [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Internalised bi-phobia, Long-Distance Relationship, tropes and cliches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 09:32:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8573173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: She can get through an almost apocalypse, but she falls apart at the thought of Holtzmann leaving.Or, the long distance relationship AU nobody asked for.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well this has been a monster of a story to write. I am a sucker for a long distance relationship, especially since reading [Cyberspace](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7951441/chapters/18181252) and [I Need You Like Water](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8176198/chapters/18732571) (which are both fantastic stories which you should definitely read). So, I wanted to put forward a lil something. It was supposed to mostly be fluffy and silly, tropey and filled with puns... but it went a little haywire. Still, that's more or less what you'll find here, along with more angst than I had intended, some Holiday cheer, and probably the worst description of San Francisco that you'll ever read.
> 
> The timeline is sort of back and forth because of the style I wanted to use, but I hope everything makes sense.

Distance is measured in numbers, and numbers are comforting to Erin, but even that doesn’t help. She can visualise numbers, easily, usually, but visualising 2,908 miles seems impossible. She sees it in hours and minutes (6 hours, 35 minutes by plane; 43 hours by car), in the line across a map, dissecting the country perfectly, and it isn’t comforting. It makes her heart pound in her chest, and her throat tighten like she can’t breathe, like being 2,908 miles away from Jillian Holtzmann might be akin to drowning.

She rolls onto her side, and in the sunlight streaming in through the open drapes, Erin memorises the curves and angles of the blonde’s sleeping body. She counts the flutter of her eyelashes against porcelain skin, calculates the exact slope of her spine, the exact tilt of the tip of her nose. Her lips are pink and swollen. They’d kissed in the parking lot of a Denny’s, after Erin had wrinkled her nose, refused to go inside. Holtzmann had come out with take out boxes full of greasy food, and they’d slumped in the front seats of her rental truck, listening to horizontal rain hitting the windows. Holtzmann had kissed her, then, and Erin had momentarily felt invincible, Holtzmann stealing glances at her as she drove back, mouth curled into an infectious smile, right hand lingering on Erin’s whenever it wasn’t on the wheel. 

They’d fallen into bed together, dinner going cold and forgotten, clothes strewn all over the neat, practical bedroom in Erin’s apartment.

Erin had tried so hard not to let this happen. She’d ignored the long, lingering looks, the dance moves, the blatant pick-up lines. Abby had looked at her knowingly on day one, the moment Holtzmann arrived, hair wild and eyes impossibly blue, but Erin had denied all knowledge.

Abby knows her better than she likes to admit, knows things about her that even Erin hadn’t been sure of until now.

Erin, usually so shy and uncomfortable in herself, so uptight and self-contained, had fallen apart under Holtzmann’s hands. This hadn’t been entirely surprising, though she regrets the ease with which the blonde had taken her to pieces, blushing at how she’d begged, how curse words had slipped with ease from her tongue as though she used them regularly. She remembers mumbling something comparable to ‘oh god, I’m going to pass out’, the soft hum of Holtzmann’s gentle laughter bringing her back down to earth, warm kisses spreading across her skin, leaving sparks of electricity in their wake.

“You’re adorable,” Holtzmann had whispered, close to her ear, and Erin had lost it all over again.

The confidence with which she’d managed to return the gesture, enthusiastic and without hesitation, had taken her by surprise, too.

Erin settles into Holtzmann’s side, ghosts her finger tips over pale skin, pink puckered lines and bumps, a map of this woman’s history, before resting her hand tentatively on Holtzmann’s waist. She feels the blonde move, a hand curling carefully around her own, before her breathing evens out again.

This is exactly what was not supposed to happen.

-

“We should probably… talk about this,” Erin says, ever the pragmatic one. 

Holtzmann’s mouth drifts over her collarbone, her tongue sweeps over the already slightly bruised skin there, soothing it, before she applies pressure again, and Erin gasps.

“It’s a long way to… um… oh!”

Holtzmann smiles against her, raises her head enough to make eye contact, “shhh,” she tells her, between kisses, and Erin melts against her in agreement.

-

Holtzmann falls in love with her too easily. She falls in love with her words, and numbers, and doodles drawn in the margin of an old tattered notebook that she finds in a box on the top shelf of somebody else’s closet.

Abby’s commentary about her is mostly scathing, mostly growled under her breath, or talked about at length after one too many drinks in a dive bar after a long week. No matter how much she claims to have moved on, to be better off without her, somehow conversation always reroutes to Erin. Holtzmann reads between the lines. She already knows how brilliant Erin’s mind is, has memorised whole sections of formula like stanzas of poetry, but through Abby’s ramblings and rants, she picks up other snippets of information. Erin Gilbert becomes a jigsaw puzzle that she struggles to put together piece by piece, a personal project that she doesn’t tell Abby about. She’s fascinated by her, not just by the mathematics that power some of the most exciting inventions Holtzmann’s ever been able to create, but by every single element of her, the hold she has over Abby even years later.

When she meets her in person, it’s been six years since she picked up that tattered proof of a book that had yet to properly come into fruition. She doesn’t think twice about it when Abby gives her the call, just books her flights and packs her bags, eager to see her first and _best_ friend, and even though she knows before she leaves that there’s a risk, that a part of her has been somehow in love with this woman since the moment she first read her words, she can’t stop herself from falling harder.

She falls in love with the hesitant movement of Erin’s hands over machinery that Holtzmann’s only barely finished, with the way her mouth twists delicately to one side when she’s stuck on an equation, with the way her teeth sink into her bottom lip when she’s embarrassed. Very few things make sense to her - physics and engineering aside - but Erin Gilbert begins to. In the months she spends observing her, Holtzmann begins to know what every twitch of her mouth means, every movement of her face or hands, every soft sigh and every laugh and every grumble of annoyance. She could watch Erin work for hours and hours and hours and never need to stop to sleep or to eat. Every tiny thing she does is beautiful and miraculous, and Holtzmann is obsessed with it all.

Erin’s smile, the little creases at the corners of her mouth, the way her nose scrunches up, that little ‘ha’ noise she makes when she laughs at herself; Holtzmann already knows that she would do anything to hear that laugh again, to see that genuine smile, the one that reaches her eyes, bright and impossibly blue even just one more time.

If she goes back to San Francisco without kissing her, she knows she’ll regret it. So she tells her. She waits a beat, half-expecting Erin to push her away, to climb out of the car in disgust, to tell her to go. But, she doesn’t. Holtzmann kisses her, and it’s like suddenly everything in the universe makes sense. The rush of electricity that floods between them makes her heart skip a beat, and Erin’s kissing her back, fingers tangled in her hair, short sharp gasps of air escaping her lips as the kiss deepens.

She knows it’s a bad idea. She still has to go. But she can’t stop herself.

-

They stop for a hotdog on the walk into work, and Holtzmann’s hand loops around Erin’s, fingers of one hand knotting against hers, the other clutching her lunch, a wild, manic grin on her face. Erin feels giddy. Holtzmann has mustard at the corner of her mouth, and Erin wants so much to lean across to kiss it away, wishes she didn’t feel so self-conscious, didn’t worry about who might be watching them.

Her mind’s focussed on how much time they have left, and how much time she doesn’t want to waste. She wipes the mustard away with the pad of her thumb, lets her hand linger there a beat too long.

In the upstairs of the firehouse, Erin tries to work on her own project, tries to ignore the hum of machinery from where Holtzmann is working on her final prototype, the way her hips sway to the ever-present music coming from the radio between their desks. It isn’t loud enough to be distracting - the music, that is - but Erin still finds herself getting very little done. She watches Holtzmann’s hands drift over the guts of a containment unit, and she can’t think about anything else. It’s startling. Holtzmann looks up at her, smiling brightly, and Erin tries to look away, honestly she does, but it’s impossible.

“I’m going to miss having her here,” Abby tells her, later, when they’re ordering take-out, and she catches Erin staring out the window at where Patty and Holtzmann are bickering in the car.

“Me too,” Erin breathes.

The look on Abby’s face tells her _she knows_ but she doesn’t say anything. It’s probably better that way, for both of them.

-

“Erinnnnn, come heeerreee,” Holtzmann sing-songs, leaning against her workbench with a gleeful expression on her face, her hair manic behind where her goggles are perched.

Looking up from her work, Erin smiles at her, sliding out of her seat and moving across the room with pace. In front of her, a metal box with a large poll sticking through it is rigged up to various other pieces of machinery. The rod turns slowly.

“What is it?” Erin says, examining the newest piece of technology with the same mix of excitement and scepticism that she expresses towards all of Holtzmann’s inventions.

Holtzmann delves under the desk and rummages around, before reappearing with what looks like… a small raw chicken. She shoves it onto the poll, causing Erin to jump a little.

“It’s a ghost roast!” she announces, throwing her arms up at her own pun.

Erin rolls her eyes, “great. You interrupted me from logistical theorising for... Holtzmann! The chicken is on fire!”

“Woops!”

“You are intolerable.”

Grinning whilst reaching for the fire extinguisher, Holtzmann sings, “you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone!”

Erin begrudgingly agrees.

-

Erin lies in bed, staring at the ceiling fan. The shower’s running. She can hear Holtzmann singing obnoxiously under the spray, imagines her dancing around with a loofah, trying to tease Erin into joining her.

Her heart won’t stop racing. Last night, they’d fallen asleep curled around one another, and in the dark she’d heard Holtzmann start to cry.

“I don’t want to go,” she’d said, momentarily sounding more like a small, scared child than a brilliant engineer.

Erin’s heart had felt like it was being smashed into a thousand pieces.

She hadn’t meant to fall this hard, this fast, but loving Jillian Holtzmann hadn’t come with rules. One moment she’d been frustrated - fascinated, but frustrated all the same; with how she had no idea of lab safety, of boundaries, of professionalism - by her, and then, all at once, something between them had changed. The flirting, the crude remarks, the wiggle of eyebrows across the room, Erin finding her cheeks flame red and her mind drifting… but not just that. The gentle press of Holtzmann’s hand on the small of her back, the way her fingers caught hold of her arm automatically, on reflex, stopping Erin from slipping on unsteady feet during a bust. The array of thoughtful, practical inventions that Holtzmann left on her desk, and her desk alone, designed around every element of her. The realisation had shaken her so hard she hadn’t known what to do with herself, except for find solitude in her work, in equations, in numbers and formulae and things familiar and safe.

Erin’s face crumples. She brings her fists to her eyes and presses them hard into the sockets, until she’s seeing stars behind her eyelids.

She hadn’t meant for this.

-

 

“Your flight’s at—-“

“3.20, I know,” Holtzmann cuts her off, scraping her fingers through messy, knotted curls.

“You need to get to—-“ Abby continues.

“Abigail, my dear, sweet Abigail… You’re not my mother.”

Abby rolls her eyes, “puh-lease, I’m not the mom friend. I’m the big sister friend. I lead you astray, but make sure you do so safely.”

Holtzmann raises her eyebrows, “is that what we’re calling it?”

“You’ve lost track of how many pets you own, so excuse me for not trusting you to make it back to San Francisco in one piece,” Abby continues, ignoring this comment.

“I do not own them, they are my children. And there’s four of them… maybe… probably.”

“Great. I am filled with confidence,” Abby deadpans. She checks her wrist watch, frowns, “I thought Erin would be here by now.”

Holtzmann frowns too, her usual humorous demeanour thrown off somewhat, “yeah, me too.”

-  
Erin’s had panic attacks since she was a little girl, eight years old and cowering under her blankets, heart hammering, blood pounding through her ears, unable to breath, waiting for the apparition at the end of her bed to disappear. Even once the ghost was done with her, the anxiety wasn’t. The list of reasons for these attacks, over the years, has stretched from something as big as being fired from a job, to as small as accidentally handing a cashier the wrong bill whilst buying groceries. Sometimes, they happen for no reason at all. She’s got better at handling them, but they’ve never gone away.

She presses her thumb deeply into the palm of her hand as the subway moves quickly - but not quickly enough - down the track. She applies more pressure, until it hurts. Her breaths are coming out uneven and ragged, her eyes closed tight. She hears the rush of wind, air travelling between the small windows either end of the carriage, feels it on her face. Her heart is pounding in her chest, and she tastes blood on her tongue. It’s been like this all morning. Usually, she’s able to drag herself out of it faster than this, to concentrate on the coping mechanisms that have carried her through thirty years of anxiety, but today none of them are working.

Holtzmann had gone back to the apartment she was renting to pack that morning, and Erin had collapsed in on herself like a house of cards.

It had taken all her strength to drag herself out of bed, and she barely remembers going through the motions of getting ready, and now the subway is moving so slowly, she has no idea if she’s even going to make it to the firehouse before Holtz has to go. She feels a pang of guilt hit her square in the chest, on top of everything else, and it’s overwhelming. She feels pathetic.

She can get through an almost apocalypse, but she falls apart at the thought of Holtzmann leaving.

-

Patty lifts Holtzmann right off her feet, and Holtzmann wraps her legs around her. They stay there for a long moment, before Patty affectionately ruffles the blonde curls on Holtz’s head, and puts her back on the ground.

Abby’s still looking at her watch.

They’ve loaded Holtzmann’s possessions into the back of the Ecto-1. It’s packed and ready to go, and they should have been on the road five minutes ago, but Erin isn’t here, and Holtzmann is refusing to leave without seeing her. Without saying goodbye.

Patty gives Abby a knowing look.

“Holtzy…” she starts, clearing her throat awkwardly.

“She’s going to be here. She has to be here.”

-

“I wish I could stay,” Holtzmann breathes, peppering kisses over Erin’s shoulders, her fingers drifting over soft, delicate skin. It feels very much as though she’s mapping out every slope, every angle of her, like she’s doing all she can to remember every single particle of her being. Erin finds herself not minding.

“Me too,” she whispers back, and she can only just make out Holtzmann’s eyes in the dark of the room, the glisten of tears on her lashes.

Holtz moves down her body, pressing kisses across every expanse of skin, until Erin is gasping underneath her. She’s never felt this loved, this appreciated before. Holtzmann looks at her like she’s a work of art, and that’s bizarre, feels alien to Erin who has always hated every inch of herself.

“I could quit,” Holtzmann says, suddenly, head bobbing up, “I could quit the project, and just stay here.”

Erin sighs, tangles her fingers in blonde curls, coaxes Holtzmann back up the bed, until she’s resting against her chest, “you can’t do that. It’s your life’s work.”

“It is,” Holtzmann agrees, sagging against her.

-

Erin takes a taxi down to the firehouse. It doesn’t move fast enough, and she lets herself out in the middle of traffic, throwing money at the driver and running the last three blocks, only narrowly missing several cars.

It’s the same adrenaline rush that carried her through what could have been the end of the world. That’s significant.

She’s almost there when she spots it, sirens wailing, the familiar flash of yellow and red as the car sails down the street, and it feels like her heart’s dropped into her stomach. She runs faster, impossibly, and screams after the car until her throat is hoarse. It feels like she’s in a dream, like this can’t possibly be reality. Ghosts make more sense to her than this.

The Ecto-1 skids to a stop. Car horns blare. Erin breathlessly climbs into the back seat.

“Geez Louise, talk about cutting it close,” Holtzmann says, grinning toothily at her. Erin sees the relief in her blue eyes, even despite the attempt at nonchalance.

Abby cranes her neck from the front seat and meets her eyes.

“I don’t think the sirens are necessary,” Erin says, finally catching her breath.

“Nah, I just like ‘em,” Holtzmann tells her, “gotta break those laws whilst I still can.”

It isn’t forever. It’s a year. Two at most. Until the project is completed. She’s not going forever, just for a while.

Erin tries not to cry.

-

Ectoplasm rains down on her and she’s soaked through, and even though this has happened before, she feels numb at the impact, can’t catch her breath. She can hear Patty trying not to laugh, Abby asking if she's alright, but she’s frozen. 

A hand mops at her eyes, strokes slime off her cheek bones.

“Still lookin’ good,” Holtzmann tells her, “10/10, would recommend to a friend.”

-

The airport is bustling with activity, and Erin hates situations like this at the best of times, but every step she makes now is filled with dread. She’s insisted on carrying one of Holtzmann’s bags, a large silver duffle with a ‘high voltage’ warning across the strap which may or may not be only ironic, and its heavy against her shoulder, even with the added muscle she’s gained from the proton packs. Still, the weight of it is distracting her from the heaviness in her heart, the physical exertion of continuing to breath normally.

Their actual goodbye is anything but dramatic. If this whole day has felt like something out of a romantic comedy, Erin should be running after her, stopping her from boarding the plane, but she doesn’t. Holtzmann hugs her tight, lips moving against her ear, and Abby’s watching them, only a couple of feet away. They don’t kiss, don’t cry on each other, don’t make promises to stay in touch. Abby triple checks that Holtzmann has her boarding pass, her passport. It’s routine, and Erin wonders how many times they’ve been through this process before, realises again that there’s this whole part of their existence that she knows nothing about. It’s odd, then, because she feels almost as though she’s intruding on something, watching Abby hug her fiercely, brushing tears away from beneath her glasses.

Erin feels jealous, and then she realises how selfish that is, and then she realises how stupid the whole thing is, and tries to feel nothing at all.

“You’re the best, Abs,” Holtzmann mumbles, throwing her a crooked smile and a thumbs up that’s lacking its usual energy.

“Right back at you, Holtzy.”

Her eyes linger on Erin for a moment, and something goes unspoken between them. Their eyes lock, and Holtzmann bobs her head, just a fraction, and Erin gets the message.

“Catch you on the flip side,” Holtzmann says, and then she’s gone, disappearing into the sea of passengers checking luggage and heading towards the gate.

-

“You didn’t!” Abby says, later, gaping at her, “oh my god you DID!”

Erin’s been moping about all afternoon, half-heartedly attacking the mountain of paperwork on her desk, her eyes drifting to the stairs every so often. It’s only taken Abby two minutes of gentle prodding to understand.

“We…” Erin trails off, blushing profusely and burying her head in her hands.  
 “Ha! Patty owes me $20.”

Erin looks at her incredulously, her cheeks flaming red, “you took a bet out on your friends hooking up? What are you, high schoolers?”

“Duh.” A pause. “How long has it… y’know…”

“Two weeks,” Erin says, quietly. Her eyes are trained on a coffee ring on the desk.

“Two weeks exactly, or…? Cos that’s another 10 bucks in my pocket if—-“

Erin glares at her, “Abby!”

“Alright, alright! I’m so happy for you! This is sort of huge, isn’t it? How are you not freaking out?” Abby relents, patting Erin on the shoulder.

“I am,” Erin admits, “it happened so fast, and now she’s back in San Francisco and I’m here and…” she tucks her chin into her chest, fiddling with her hands, “how could I have let this happen?”

“It’s San Francisco, Erin, it isn’t the end of the world.”

It feels like it.

-

Holtz traces her fingers over the light purple bruise on her chest and sighs, doing the buttons of her shirt up over it. It’s fading, the edges already growing fainter and fainter.

The red light on her old school answering machine is glowing. She presses the button, the tenseness in her stomach fading into disappointment when she hears Dr. Gorin’s voice, droning on about some conference she’d forgotten about. She loves her mentor like a second mother, but it isn’t her voice she wants to hear.

Holtzmann (07:13): Can we Skype tonight? I miss you.

She almost follows it with an ‘I love you’, but she’s not ready to say the words out loud yet. Or maybe she’s afraid that Erin’s not ready to hear them.

-

Erin propels herself into her work. It isn’t hard - she and Abby have sealed a book deal, and the phone continues to ring off the hook with or without Holtzmann. She’s desperately grateful for the distraction.

The upstairs lab is silent, and it’s unnerving. Aside from a few tools and pieces of scrap metal, everything’s exactly the same as it was when Holtzmann left it, as if she’s going to come back any second. The space had initially been used for storage, before Holtzmann claimed it, but Erin had found herself working up there alongside the engineer for the majority of the time she’d been with them. Now, Erin avoids it. She sits at the desk she’d abandoned all those months ago, and tries not to think about how empty the place feels without her.

She sleeps on the couch at the firehouse for the first few nights, can’t bear to go home.

Erin glances at her phone, balanced haphazardly on a pile of books at the end of her desk. Patty and Abby are chatting in the kitchen. They’re scheduled to Skype with Holtzmann this afternoon. Erin can’t decide if she’s excited, or dreading it. They’ve only Skyped once, just the two of them, and it was awkward. Erin had bailed after ten minutes, and still feels horrible about it, ignoring Holtzmann’s requests to try again over the next week.

At least Patty and Abby would be there. At least she wouldn’t wind up sitting there in silence again.

She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She misses Holtzmann desperately, can’t fit herself into the spaces she used to belong, spaces that existed long before her, without thinking about her constantly. But, as soon as she’s faced with actually talking to her, Erin freezes up. They message back and forth, but it feels heavy and clunky. Just hearing Holtzmann’s voice, seeing her face on the tiny screen on her laptop, makes Erin feel too many things, and it’s confusing, she doesn’t know how to cope with any of it.

At 4pm, they gather around Abby’s laptop, and wait for Holtzmann to come on her lunch break. Erin feels her heart race, unsure if it’s out of anticipation or anxiety, and then all of a sudden Holtzmann’s there, and they’re all talking over one another, and it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know what to say because Abby and Patty barely pause for breath to let her get a word in edgeways anyway.

“Jillian, did you ensure the unit on 365 was stabilised before you took your personal call?” a voice says, somewhere off screen, and Erin snaps back into the conversation at once.  
 She recognises Dr. Rebecca Gorin from the SFSU website, from googling Holtzmann’s mentor in the middle of the night before she’d gone. As her face comes into focus, she sees the way Holtzmann lights up, babbling to Rebecca about her work, before turning back to the camera.

“These are your colleagues from New York?” Rebecca asks.

“Yes,” Holtzmann confirms, before pointing to the screen, towards where Erin’s sitting, “and we’re dating.”

All the blood rushes to Erin’s face and the stammered ‘no’ comes out before she can stop it, and she knows she’s fucked up because Holtzmann’s face droops, and Abby’s staring at her, and all the air seems to have been sucked out of the room.

“Wuh wuh,” Holtzmann says, after a beat, “back to the drawing board on that one.”

-

Holtzmann dances around the lab with a blow torch in each hand, one hip jutted out to the side. Her legs seem to have a life of their own. She tosses her head back and glides across the space between their desks effortlessly, still mouthing along to the 80s pop music that’s playing from their shared tape player.

Transfixed by her, Erin can’t help but watch with interest, just as she has done every time. Only, this time, it’s different. This time it’s with the memory of the night before burned into her mind, causing her face to flush.

“Baby, just one more time to touch you,” Holtzmann sings out loud, tossing the blowtorches aside haphazardly, and sashaying across to Erin. She grabs her by the hips, and forces her to dance along, Erin letting out a snort of a laugh. She moves with the same gawky awkwardness that first drew Holtzmann to her.

“Holtz…” Erin giggles, as the blonde’s hands move further up her body.

“Baby, why can’t I have youuuu?”

She half-heartedly smacks Holtzmann away, but allows her to take her hands, allows her to dance her around the room.

It’s the most she’s laughed in a long time.

-

They arrange to Skype again that evening and Holtzmann tries to bite back the hurt that keeps ripping through her. She’d laughed it off, but truthfully, it hurt more than anything she could describe, to have Erin deny their relationship to the one person it mattered most to.

 _She probably just doesn’t want Abby and Patty to know,_ Holtzmann rationalises, deciding that this must be her fault. She should have asked, first. Nobody deserved to be outed in front of their friends before they were ready; it was wrong of her to assume that they knew. Despite the fact all the signs had pointed in that direction. Despite the fact Abby had sent her a congratulatory text message that more or less confirmed that she knew. Despite the fact Patty had told her she didn’t want to hear anything about them doing the nasty.

It’s her fault. It must be.

-

It’s strained. More strained than last time, even. They start off with small talk; Erin asks about the weather, Holtzmann babbles about work. Then they full into a lull, and the unspoken is hanging there between them, uneasy and heavy in the silence.

“So… what you said earlier…” Holtzmann begins. She’s bad at serious conversation.

“Yeah… look, Holtz, I’m sorry. I know she means a lot to you. I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of…”

Holtzmann smiles, “no, no, it’s okay.”

“It isn’t. I just… I’m not sure this is working out.”

The silence is deafening. Holtzmann tries to clear her throat, but even that forces her voice to crack.

“I haven’t—“ Erin starts.

“I haven’t been in a long distance relationship before either.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Erin tells her, quietly.

“Right.”

The blood is rushing between her ears and she can tell what comes next isn’t something she wants to hear, but she keeps prodding.

“You’re the first… I haven’t…” Erin sighs, “I don’t know how to say any of this.”

Holtzmann doesn’t say anything, though she has a joke on the tip of her tongue, anything to resolve this tension between them. She works her jaw until it clicks, fiddles with a small lump of metal on her workbench.

“You were there, and you kissed me, and I was lonely, and you wanted me, and I didn’t want you to leave but it was confusing… but you’re there now and I… I’m not…” it all comes out in one long breath and it’s too much to take in. Holtzmann nods, dumbly.

“I know you’re not here. You’re in New York. That’s why we’re Skyping.”

“I’m not… like you,” Erin says in a small voice.

Holtzmann can feel herself shutting down, tries to will herself against it. She doesn’t deal well with this. She can’t deal with it. Her fingers dance nervously against her knee, unable to stay still.

“Oh… woops!” she says, chuckling robotically. It comes out hollow and unfunny.

“I don’t think we should Skype without the others anymore,” Erin says.

“Okay.”

-

The next morning a postcard arrives in the mail. It’s probably the most garish thing Holtzmann could find, with “come see San Francisco!!!” written in bright red writing across the front, against a horrendously over saturated image of the city. On the back, in her scrawl, it says ‘Wish you were here’.

Erin cries.

-

Abby puts up with Erin moping about the firehouse for a couple of hours, and then she snaps.

“Okay, what happened? You know I’m the nosiest person on earth and it’s killing me not knowing what’s going on between you two.”

Erin gulps, sets down her coffee cup slowly and turns to look at her, “nothing is going on. Not anymore.”

She says it with a lot more nonchalance than she feels.

“Uh, what? Since when?”

“Since… yesterday. I broke it off.”

Abby raises her eyebrows, “is that what that was? Because I don’t think that was breaking it off, I think that was—“

“We spoke later, privately,” Erin explains, cutting her off, “it’s over and done with now, okay?”

“I’m not going to pry - no, I mean it - but… I really don’t understand.”

Sighing, Erin lowers her head to the desk and presses her forehead against the cold wood, slumping in her desk chair. She feels like she might start to cry any second, and she really doesn’t want to cry in front of Abby, not again.

“I messed up,” she mumbles.

“Oh honey, I know.”

They sit there in silence for a while, Abby awkwardly rubbing Erin’s back as she buries her face in her arms, still flopping onto the desk. Eventually, she sighs, sitting up and meeting Abby’s eye for the first time in ten minutes.

“I think I always knew, I just… repressed it. You remember Maggie Aller in our Junior year?”

“Of course… you always wanted so badly to be friends with her, but she was one of the popular kids…”

Erin frowns, “I think I wanted to be more than friends with her. There were others, too. I was so scared it was just another thing I was making up for attention I…” she sighs, fights the urge to bury her head in her hands again.

“You’re not the only one who wasn’t like anyone else, you know,” Abby reminds her, gently, “I never understood why you and all the other girls so desperately wanted to be in relationships because I didn’t… never have.”

With a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, Erin shakes her head, “I feel way too old to be figuring this out now.”

“Psssh…”

“I don’t think I can fix this.”

Abby places her hand over Erin’s, “you’ll figure it out. You wanna tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know… I panicked. I was so confused. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I thought if she wasn’t here and I didn’t have to see her or hear her, I could go back to being… normal.”

Abby stares at her, letting her hand go, “is that what you told her?”

“I… not exactly, no, I just…”

“Erin, you know I love you, but I’ve got to talk to Holtz right now. If you told her what you just told me she’s… I really gotta call her.”

Erin feels a lump form in her throat, “I didn’t mean to…”

“No, you never mean to, this is just what you do, Erin.”

The words sit there, a painful weight between them, and Erin digs her finger nails into the skin of her palm, wills herself not to cry.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Abby says.

“No, you’re-you’re right.”

“I’m going to call Holtzmann.”

Erin lets the first tears spill, “tell her I’m so—“

“No offence, but you’ve done enough damage,” she says, softly.

Abby leaves. Erin sits there staring at the space her best friend is no longer occupying, and she finally crumbles.

-

 **Erin (13:45):** Holtz, I want to talk.  
**Erin (14:13):** Please… I know I messed up. I just want to fix things.  
**Erin (15:49):** Okay, I’m going to leave you alone. I’m sorry.

-

 

Erin shuts herself in the bathroom. Her breaths come out short and ragged, her heart pounding the same way it did on that morning on the subway. She squeezes her eyes closed, and wills herself to calm down.

It’s no good. She’s fucked everything up. Again.

-

 **Holtzmann (17:52):** Ok, I’m ready to talk now.

-

Erin's expecting her apologies to fall on deaf ears, so when Holtzmann appears on screen, soft and warm and smiling as though nothing’s happened, she doesn’t quite know what to do. The explanation comes flooding out of her before she can stop them, and there’s a desperation between them. Erin touches the laptop screen, wishing she could touch Holtzmann instead, and before she knows what’s happening she’s crying and Holtzmann is cracking jokes, doing anything to make her laugh.

They stay on Skype for hours, until it’s dark outside in both New York and San Francisco, and Erin’s yawning, fighting to keep her eyes open.

“Alright Sleeping Beauty,” Holtzmann says, frowning at her, “time for bed.”

“Mmmph,” Erin manages, stretching and unfolding her limbs from her uncomfortable office chair.

She dreams of soft blonde curls and milky white skin, firm hands and gentle kisses. When she wakes, she’s cradling the pillow to her chest, curled protectively around it.

-

 **Holtzmann (09:22):** Saw this and thought of you :D

The message is followed by a gif of someone gawkily dancing, long limbs moving awkwardly. Erin blushes, rolling her eyes.

 **Erin (09:24):** Funnily enough, I had that exact hair style in kindergarten.  
**Holtzmann (09:24):** Knew it!

Her phone buzzes on and off all day, mostly with links to videos or gifs, or long streams of emojis that Erin can’t quite decipher on her own. It’s distracting from the mountain of work she’s accumulated, but somehow, she can’t find it in her to mind.

-

The lab in San Francisco is bustling with activity, every day moving closer and closer to the breakthrough that would seal their deal with the government project they’re working on. Holtzmann falls into a routine that involves working all through the night, messaging Erin every half hour or so, and Skyping whenever she gets a free moment. It might not be helping her reach maximum productivity, but it is keeping her sane.

The work is thrilling, and Holtz gets a real opportunity to flex her creative muscles, but it’s exhausting too, and she misses the easy going atmosphere of the firehouse in New York, the familiarity of nights in with her favourite three people, working over tubs of take out and sharing stupid stories. Their lab works on a rotation, and more often than not Holtzmann finds herself sharing the space with people she doesn’t recognise, aside from Dr. Gorin, her only constant aside from the buzz of her cellphone, and the blare of music from her trusty tape player.

Missing Erin is like a constant ache in her chest that won’t go away, and even though she loses herself in her work like she always does, buried in metal scraps and soldering irons, and formulae that could only be more brilliant if they were formed by her favourite physicist, she feels as though part of her has been left behind in New York. It’s unbearable in moments. She’ll go hours without contact, too absorbed in work that leaves her exhausted and forgetting to pause for lunch or dinner, and it’ll hit her like a tidal wave.

“Just a few months more,” she mutters to herself, as she strips wires, running a hand through hair that’s more frazzled than curly, hasn’t been washed in days, “a few months and it’ll be over.”

-

“Holtzy doing ok?” Patty asks, as Erin dishes up Chinese take-out onto her plate. (“It’s take out, Erin.” “So, we can still be civilised.”)

“Yeah, the lab’s just crazy right now.”

“Haven’t heard from her in a while; you mind sharing your next Skype date?”

Erin smiles, “sure. It’s hard to know when she’ll be free, though.”

As it happens, it’s three days before she’s free to Skype again. They crowd around Erin’s laptop and Abby and Patty rib her about work, and San Francisco, and whether or not she’s eating enough. Erin watches, a fond smile dancing on her lips. These people are her family. She doesn’t even mind giving up her first Skype date in a week. It’s worth it for this.

-

 **Erin (06:32):** I swear, if I wake up to one more Joe Biden meme…  
**Holtzmann (09:13):** It’s the only thing getting me through the election, Erin :(  
**Holtzmann (09:14):** Also, I’m so proud of you for learning the word ‘meme’.

-

Holtzmann stretches out along the bed, arms folded behind her head. Erin’s babbling on about the book she and Abby are working on, cheeks flushed, using her hands to punctuate her story. Holtzmann doesn’t interrupt, just watches. She feels warm and happy and loved, and it’s still a foreign concept to her, still sort of overwhelming.

“I love you,” she blurts, interrupting.

Erin gawks at her, “…huh?”

“I love you,” she repeats, cocking her head to one side.

Erin’s cheeks turn pink and her teeth sink into her bottom lip. It’s the same expression she gets when she’s concentrating on a particularly hard equation.

“You…” the corner of her mouth turns up, “you love me?”

“Yep. You’re a nerd, and I love you.”

Chuckling softly, Erin scrunches her nose up, brings a hand up to her eyes, covering her face.

“You love me?” she says again.

“Uhuh.”

“I… wow…”

Holtzmann frowns, “are you having a stroke?”

Erin laughs, lowering her hand, and Holtzmann notices that there’s tears in her eyes, “I love you too. God. I’ve never actually said that out loud before.”

“Me neither!” Holtzmann grins.

-

 **Erin (21:02):** Love you xxx  
**Holtzmann (21:04):** You already said that ;)   
**Erin (21:04):** I know. I just can’t stop saying it.  
**Holtzmann (21:05):** You’re such a NERD.  
**Holtzmann (21:05):** I love you too.

-

“What’s Holtzy doing for Thanksgiving?” Patty asks, helping Erin stuff envelopes during their lunch break. They’ve been asked to send out holiday cards by the Mayor, and it’s not only bizarre, but time-consuming too.

They’ve already tried to get Kevin to do the brunt of it, but after watching him trying to force all the cards into one envelope, they’d taken the task away from him.

“She said something about her and Gorin spending it together, but I suspect that might be code for ‘she’s staying in the lab all day’.”

Chuckling, Patty drops another envelope onto the pile, “sounds about right. I hope she’s taking Christmas Day out though - otherwise that’s just plain wrong.”

“We haven’t really discussed it,” Erin says, shrugging. She’s anticipating spending Christmas alone for another year, having already declined Abby’s offer of staying with her parents in Michigan. They’re spending Thanksgiving together, already, just the two of them as Patty has family in the area; Erin doesn’t want to step on Abby’s toes any further than that, even if she does keep insisting it’s okay.

She also doesn’t really want to deal with the awkwardness of her own family.

“She doesn’t have any family, you know,” Abby supplies, emerging from the kitchen with a coffee cup in each hand, “I think she usually spends Christmas alone.”

That’s what sets the first gears into motion in Erin’s head.

-

 

They spend Thanksgiving evening on Skype together, first with Abby who is tipsy from the amount of wine they consumed earlier in the day, and then, later, when she’s gone to bed, just the two of them. Just as Erin had suspected, Holtzmann’s been at the lab all day. She and Gorin did have Turkey for dinner, though, in the form of two TV meals in little silver trays. Erin wrinkles her nose up in disgust at the thought.

“We got a lot of work done, though. And without the ducklings!” Holtzmann insists, grinning at her in the fluorescent lights of the lab.

‘Ducklings’ is what Holtzmann refers to the students who follow her and Gorin around as. Erin is at least pleased to know that they were spared Thanksgiving.

As midnight approaches, Erin yawns, stretching out on Abby’s couch, “shouldn’t you be going home? It’s, what, nine there?”

Holtzmann shrugs, “I’m anticipating an all nighter.”

“Don’t work too hard,” Erin tells her. Holtzmann rolls her eyes. Conversation rolls down for the night, though they are both reluctant to sign off, despite Erin struggling once again to keep her eyes open.

“Hey, Erin, what did you put on your turkey hand?”

Erin frowns at her, “excuse me?”

“You know, the turkey handprint? Things you’re thankful for?”

“That is a tradition I am unfamiliar with…” Erin tells her, a sleepy smile across her face at the look of confusion on Holtzmann’s.

“Really? That isn’t a thing?”

“Nope.”

Holtzmann’s eyes go wide for a second, as if Erin has just told her that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, before she recovers, “okay well, what would you, theoretically, put on your turkey hand?”

Erin pretends to think about this for a long time, biting down on her bottom lip, unable to stop a smile creeping into the corners.

“Particle physics,” she says, after a beat, shrugging her shoulders.

“Really?!”

Erin laughs, “no! I feel like all the things I’m grateful for this year would not fit on a turkey hand.”

“What if it was a hand the size of the firehouse?”

“Maybe.”

Holtzmann’s smile is soft, and Erin feels an ache in her chest. It doesn’t matter how long they talk on Skype, how long they spend making eachother laugh, it’s never going to be the same as the real thing.

-

 **Holtzmann (06:12):** DECK THE HALLS WITH TINY BOW TIES OF HOLLY, FA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA  
**Holtzmann (06:13):** TIS THE SEASON TO BE SLIMY, FA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA  
**Holtzmann (06:14):** DON WE NOW OUR GAY APPAREL (I didn’t need to change that one)  
**Erin (06:14):** Holtzmann… it’s 6am. That’s 3am your time. Go to bed.  
**Holtzmann (06:16):** :(  
**Holtzmann (06:16):** Erin Grinchbert

-

Abby sends Holtzmann a video of Erin kicking ghost ass in the middle of a bust. She moves as though choreographed, slaying ghost after ghost with the pistol Holtzmann had perfectly designed for her, and cheering gleefully when they’re all wiped out without even the hint of ectoplasm making its way down her jumpsuit. She punches the air, and it’s simultaneously the cutest and hottest thing Holtzmann has ever seen. She watches it over and over and over. New York is too far away, and she’s beginning to forget the feel of Erin’s lips against hers, the smell of her shampoo, the squeeze of her fingers against her own.

Erin his horrifically embarrassed when she finds out about the video, to begin with, but then, a week later, she sends another one.

Holtz screenshots it, sets a picture of her standing over a ghost with her proton wand positioned just so as her desktop wallpaper. It helps.

-

Holtzmann sends postcards fairly frequently, the most obnoxious and grotesque ones that she can find, usually with ironic, one sentence messages on the back. The worst is one from a seafood restaurant which features one of their lobsters, shiny and red, with huge black eyes, and “Catch Of The Day” written across the front. In her spidery handwriting, Holtzmann had scrawled ‘GONE FISHING’ on the back, with a winking face.

In return, Erin sends care packages. She sends baked goods from Holtzmann’s favourite delis and cafes in New York City, and silly Ghostbuster merchandise as and when it pops up (which is happening with more and more frequency, much to everyone’d dismay). Their logo finds its way onto mugs, stationary, tea-towels, clothing, and even a snow globe. I

After much debate over it, Erin sends a t-shirt she finds on the internet with ‘Girls Don’t Like Boys, Girls Like Ghosts and Ghostbusters’ on it, and Holtzmann cackles when she opens it, vows to wear it to bed for the rest of her life.

-

“Holtzmann!” Erin hisses, the phone pressed against her ear. She’s standing in the lab space they used to occupy together, where she’s started working again, “anyone could have seen that.”

Holtzmann chuckles, “what? It’s not like you could see _anything important._ ”

“Eurghhh you are the worst,” Erin says. Her cheeks are still flame red, and despite being a whole floor away from the others, she keeps her voice low, convinced they’re going to overhear somehow.

“Erinnnnn,” Holtzmann sings into her ear, teasing her from across the other side of the country, “tell me you liked itttt.”

She groans, buries her face in the hand that isn’t holding the phone. Of course she _liked_ it, she just didn’t need to receive it with absolutely no warning in the middle of sharing lunch with her - no, _their_ \- friends.

“I liked it,” she says, quietly, embarrassed.

“Booyah!” Holtzmann says, too loudly for the conversation they’re having, “now it’s your turn.”

“What?! No! Holtz, you don’t know who is looking at this stuff, the internet isn’t as secure as you clearly think it is, and I could never… I wouldn’t even know how to…”

“God, you sound like such a grandma, Erin,” Holtzmann drawls, and even without seeing her, Erin can imagine the look on her face, and it makes her cheeks flame impossibly more red.

“I’m not doing it,” Erin tells her, again.

“Okay,” Holtz says, the pout evident in her voice, and Erin knows that this isn’t the end of it because she would never go down this easily, without a fight, but stupidly, naively, she lets it go at that.

It’s two days later that she receives the next picture, and she almost throws her phone out of the firehouse window.

-

Erin’s unrecognisable from the woman she was last year, and as December draws in, it hits her just how much her life has changed. It’s overwhelming. She thinks she should still be panicking over it, but instead, she finally feels comfortable within her own skin, and that in itself is mildly terrifying.

“I’m proud of you, you know?” Abby tells her, as they load their proton packs into the back of the Ecto-1 on the way back from another bust.

Erin frowns, “where’s that come from?”

“Dunno… been meaning to say it for a while.”

Smiling, Erin drops the last piece of equipment in, and reaches across to hug her best friend.

-

It’s raining. Holtzmann is distracted from her work, not for the first time this week, as she stares outside at the rain trickling down the large glass window of the lab, where the blinds are usually closed. Winter in San Francisco is miserable, it doesn’t come with the Christmassy atmosphere of New York City, just the rain and the cold. It’s gloomy outside, and if anything, Holtzmann is grateful for the bland white walls of the lab at SFSU because at least it’s bright. She easily loses of track of time here, when the blinds are closed, because it could be midnight or midday and it would still look the same.

It could be Christmas Eve, and it would still look the same.

Holtzmann swallows thickly, dragging her eyes away from the window, and back to the assortment of machinery spread out over her work bench. She hasn’t heard from Erin since this morning, but she’d expected as much. At the last minute, she’d made the decision to go to Michigan with Abby after all. Holtzmann’s glad; they shouldn’t both have to miss out on Christmas.

She drags the carcass of a dismantled prototype towards her, and sets about re-wiring it, revelling in the ease of doing something she could probably do in her sleep. It’s written into her muscle memory, and she doesn’t have to think about it. There are more pressing tasks that she should be working on, but she concentrates on what she knows, seeking comfort in it in the otherwise empty lab.

The lab door opens, and Holtzmann doesn’t look up from what she’s doing. Rebecca’s been in and out a number of times, checking up on her, mostly, before she sets off for the holidays. It had taken a lot of convincing to get her mentor to allow her to stay here alone, and she seemed to think that if she hovered around enough, she’d be able to convince Holtzmann to go with her after all.

“Come here often?” a voice says, behind her, and Holtzmann freezes, almost dropping her screwdriver in her surprise.

She spins round on her metal stool, knocking various pieces of scrap metal off her workbench in her haste to scramble to her feet, but thankfully nothing that’s going to implode.

Erin’s standing in the doorway, her cheeks pink from the outside. She’s wrapped in a thick maroon scarf, and a grey coat, her hands deep inside her pockets, though Holtzmann can make out her hand clenching and unclenching even through the thick fabric, an anxious tick. 

“Am I hallucinating?” Holtzmann asks, “when was the last time I ate?”

Erin strides towards her, and Holtzmann practically trips over her own feet in her rush to get to her. They collide somewhere in the middle, and Holtzmann’s hands move straight to the cold skin of Erin’s cheeks, brushing against her hair, before she pulls her close and kisses her. They melt against one another, Erin letting out a soft sigh, and then the kiss deepens, and it’s all Holtzmann can do to force herself to pull away, and not undress her right here in the lab.

“What are you doing here?” she chokes out, running her hands over her face, through Erin’s hair, not wanting to let go of her for a moment.

“I had to see you,” Erin tells her, one hand playing with a loose curl of blonde hair, the other tucked around her waist, “I had some holiday to take, so, here I am.”

Holtzmann makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a cry and draws her closer again, kissing her feverishly, hands roaming all over her body, determining that yes, she’s real, and yes, she’s here, and nothing else matters.

“I love you,” she gasps against her lips, “I love you I love you I love you.”


End file.
